Jim Miller on Politics

Pseudo-Random Thoughts

Counting Ballots Isn't Complicated: But it seems to be beyond the ability
of Milwaukee.

A day after the City of Milwaukee reported a primary election turnout above 80,000 — more than a
quarter of the city's registered voters — a Journal Sentinel analysis found that the number might
be inflated by tens of thousands.
. . .
By the city's calculation, only about half the ballots cast in Tuesday's primary actually included votes
in the hottest races — those for sheriff and attorney general. For example, the city reported
78,801 ballots cast in the attorney general race in primaries for the two major parties, but vote totals
for the Democratic and Republican candidates combined amounted to only 40,971. By that count,
37,830 ballots did not include a vote in the race — a number that political observers regard as
obviously flawed.
. . .
The wards did show varied numbers of people registered to vote, which resulted in four wards coming in
with turnouts inexplicably higher than 100%. The highest was at one Sholes Middle School ward,
which showed 746 ballots cast and just 513 registered voters - a turnout of 145.4%.

Judging by the article, this is a case of flawed vote counting software, not massive fraud, but, even so,
it is not encouraging to see this kind of failure in a city that was plagued by vote fraud in the
last two presidential elections.

While Researching Rhode Island in the Almanac of American Politics,
I came across this amusing tidbit about Senator Lincoln Chafee.

. . . Lincoln Chafee graduated from Brown, where he was captain of the wrestling team, and went off to
horseshoing school at Montana State University. For seven years he worked as a farrier at racetracks
in the United States and Canada.

He then went back to Rhode Island and began a conventional political career, so we can't say that he went
directly from farrier to senator. (There ought
to be great many jokes about his trip from horse barns to the Senate, but I haven't seen even one.)

(The Almanac also says that Chafee was "only the second son appointed to the Senate to succeed
his father, the other being Harry Byrd, Jr., in 1965".)

A Better Organization is one of the advantages the Republicans will have in
this election, according to Michael Barone. And the way Republicans used that organization to save
(probably) a Republican senate seat in Rhode Island
illustrates that conclusion.

Sen. Lincoln Chafee won his GOP Senate primary in Rhode Island by a 54-to-46 percent margin over
Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey.
. . .
But the big news here is the success of the Republican turnout machine. The National Republican
Senatorial Committee ran tough ads against Laffey—hitting him for being lax on immigration, for
example—and the Republican National Committee sent in hundreds of operatives to turn out the vote for
Chafee. Many conservatives are angry about this, of course, but whatever you think about it, it
seemed to work. With 98 percent of precincts reporting, here's the count, courtesy of Marc Ambinder
of National Journal's Hotline (the Rhode Island secretary of state's website doesn't seem to have election
returns: for shame).

RI SEN:Chafee: 54% .... 33,685 Laffey : 46% .... 29,276

As you can see, Chafee's lead is 4,409 votes out of 62,961 cast. I have to believe the RNC's
turnout drive made the difference.

I don't have to believe that, but I will say that Barone is generally correct about such questions, and
that most observers agree that the Republicans learned a lot from their narrow win in 2000 — and
showed what they had learned in 2004. Rhode Island, though it has two House seats, is not much
larger than the average House seat (roughly 1 million versus roughly 700 thousand), so if the Republicans
can gain 4500 votes for their candidate in this primary, it is not implausible to think
that they might be able to gain a few thousand votes for their candidates in many of the marginal
House seats this November.

I expect the Republicans to keep this organizational edge, as long as
Howard Dean is the Democratic chairman. Dean
is entertaining, but he is no match as a political technician for either
Karl Rove or
Ken Mehlman.

Ever Think That New York Times Acts Like A Criminal Organization? Some of
those running the New York Times
agree.

Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has taken his place among the spirits permanently haunting West 43rd
Street. "The basic goal," New York Times reporter David Barstow said, "is to make it more difficult
for a future Fitzgerald to follow the breadcrumbs of phone records and notes and expense slips from
reporter to source."

Mr. Barstow, the Pulitzer- and Peabody-winning investigative reporter, was on the phone Sept. 12, shortly
before The Times began this year's round of legal seminars for the staff.

The sessions, led by Times lawyers George Freeman and David McCraw, have traditionally offered a brush-up
on privacy, sourcing and general newsgathering. But executive editor Bill Keller announced in a
staff memo that the 2006 version would address "the persistent legal perils that confront us."
. . .
"With this crazy environment, with subpoenas and so on, there is this feeling that you have to act like a
drug dealer or a Mafioso," Mr. Barstow said. "We don't have any reason to think right now that
there aren't going to be more of these cases. So we should take precautions. It's just no
longer an abstract threat."
. . .
Mr. Barstow said he suggests disposing of story drafts and cutting back on telephone and e-mail contact
with sources—or using disposable cell phones for important calls. Reporters should be wary of
meeting sources at their offices, Mr. Barstow said, so as to avoid sign-in sheets and security cameras.

The idea that they could avoid these legal perils by acting less like drug dealers or Mafioso does not
seem to have occurred to those running the New York Times.

Which newspaper was loudest in its demands for the appointment of Patrick Fitzgerald? Why, it was
the New York Times, as many of you may recall. While the New York Times was calling for a
special prosecutor, more sensible people, including editorial writers at the Wall Street Journal, were
trying to explain to the Times that a special prosecutor would have to question reporters, including some
reporters working for the Times. Remarkably, those running the Times seem not to
have learned anything from this affair.

That Was Quick: On Tuesday,
I wrote that it was too soon to tell which party would win the US House of Representatives. This
morning, as I was glancing over the Chicago Boyz site, I noticed
that the Intrade betters were now predicting a Republican win. (By, granted, a small margin (Bid:
52.6, Ask: 55.8).) So I checked the
Iowa market and found a similar shift
toward the Republicans in the last two days, though the betters are still, very slightly, favoring a
Democratic win.

As for me, I think it is still too soon to tell. When the election gets closer, I plan to do my
own prediction.

President Romney? Maybe. When I look for a president I begin by
looking at successful governors. Being a governor is the best training for being president, and
a governor's performance in office is almost always the best guide to his performance as president.
(If we had paid more attention to Jimmy Carter's mixed record as governor of Georgia, we would never have
elected him president.) If Florida governor Jeb Bush were not the son of a former president and
the brother of the current president, he would be near the top of my list of governors to consider.
But he is, and that excludes him, at least for the next election.

So I have begun looking seriously at other Republican governors. And I have found one Republican
governor who impresses me,
Mitt Romney of Massachusetts. I haven't
settled on Romney as my favorite, but I have found much in his record to admire.

You can't discuss Romney's prospects without mentioning the great question: Is the United States
ready to elect a Mormon president? Or two questions, actually. Is the Republican party
ready to nominate a Mormon, and is the country ready to elect a Mormon? My tentative answer to
both questions is yes, in some circumstances. In fact, in Republican primaries, his late
conversion to a pro-life position might be a more of a problem than his religion. (You can find
a discussion of that late conversion in this
Bill Sammon analysis.)
And in a general election, Romney might have the help of evangelical and Catholic leaders, because his
views on moral questions are closer to theirs than the views of the Democratic candidate. That
may seem strange for those who know a little about the history of the Mormons, but times change and
people change with them.

(I do have to note the great exception, President Lincoln. He never held any executive office
before he became president, but he was, in my opinion, our greatest president. But that doesn't
mean that we should start our searches for president by looking at one-term congressmen.

One interesting oddity in his record: Romney spent two and a half years as a Mormon
missionary — in France.)

"Too Soon To Say" That's my answer to a much debated question: Will the
Democrats take control of the House or the Senate this November? I say that because I think that
campaigns matter — and the campaigns have barely begun. I also believe that Republicans tend to
gain during campaigns, though I will admit I have not seen a formal examination of that question.
I think that Republicans gain because of the bias of "mainstream" journalists. Between elections,
most voters get most of their information from "mainstream" journalists, few of whom like
Republicans much. During the campaign, many voters get to hear the other side. This is
especially important for offices below the presidency, where voters may have little idea what, if anything,
a senator or congressman has done.
Another way to say that is that, if the election were held today, the Republicans might well lose control
of both houses of congress. (The current betting, as I write, makes the Democrats favorites to
win the House, but not the Senate, according to both
Intrade and the
Iowa Election Market.) But
the election isn't being held today, it is being held eight weeks from today. And the Republicans
have, I believe, an opportunity to make up lost ground in those eight weeks.

And the Republicans may have already made up some of that lost ground, according to
this analysis.

Ignored was a Gallup Poll released in late August that found an unexpected tightening in what pollsters
call the "generic ballot" question: "If the election were being held today, which party's candidate would
you vote for in your congressional district?" Pundits looking to assess the national mood regularly
cite the results of this question, and did so promiscuously earlier this year when Democrats enjoyed
seemingly insurmountable advantages such as 54% to 38% in late June, or 51% to 40% immediately before
Congress' August recess.

But then something happened as lawmakers spent August reconnecting with their constituents. The
advantage for the generic Democratic candidate slipped from 11 points in late July, to nine points in
early August, and then to a statistically insignificant two points (47% to 45%) in its August 18-20
survey. Among those most likely to vote, moreover, the Democrats' advantage disappeared entirely,
with Gallup reporting a dead heat: 48% to 48%.

Anxious to understand this movement toward Republican candidates, Gallup sorted the responses to the
generic-ballot question into two new categories. Are Democrats, it wanted to know, "competitive
in U.S. House districts currently held by Republicans," or "just getting a larger-than-normal share of
the vote in the districts they already hold"? Obviously, the odds that Democrats will retake the
House are exponentially greater if they demonstrate strength against Republicans in their own backyards
than if they simply accumulate larger-than-usual margins in their own districts.

In brief, Gallup found that, earlier in the year, the Democrats were showing strength in Republican
districts, but no longer are. (Yes, he misused "exponentially", but we know what he
means.)

Events between now and the election may help the Republicans. For example, gasoline prices
have fallen and are likely to
continue to fall.

American motorists should expect gasoline prices to slide another 10 cents at the pumps in the next couple
of weeks, tracking a steep decline in the price of crude oil, the AAA motorist group said on
Tuesday.

"We think gasoline prices will continue to fall, with an average of $2.50 a gallon or lower very possible
within a couple of weeks," said AAA spokesman Geoff Sundstrom.

Retail gasoline prices averaged $2.61 a gallon on Tuesday, down about 40 cents in a month, according to
the AAA's daily survey of more than 80,000 gas stations.

Every bit lower will help the Republicans.

A dramatic foreign event between now and the election would also, most likely, help the
Republicans. And that's true whether the event is good or bad. Americans tend to support the
president, at least temporarily, during foreign crises. After the botched
Bay of Pigs invasion, Kennedy's popularity
actually rose. (To his credit, he found that strange.)

Studies of elections show that they are often decided in the last week or so before the vote. If, for
instance, the 2000 election had been held a week earlier, Bush would probably have won by three or four
points. (The drunk driving "scandal" was timed perfectly. If it has been sprung earlier in
the year, Bush would probably have suffered no significant damage. And many of the journalists who
hyped it knew that it was bogus.) And the same is true of many other elections. Harry
Truman was behind for much of 1948, but he pulled ahead at the end, with the help of a vigorous (and
very partisan) campaign. And I suspect that the Republicans did not get the lead in the 1994
election until the last month, maybe even the last few weeks.

So, for many reasons, it is too soon to tell which party will control the House and Senate for the next
two years. And you shouldn't pay much attention to anyone who tells you differently.

(Some of you will noticed that I borrowed the title from a famous quip on the French Revolution by
Zhou Enlai. For the record, I have no trouble
saying that the French Revolution was mostly a bad thing, if only because of the enormous number of people
who died in the repression and wars that followed.)

Throw The Bums Out! That's the spirit in which I will approach
Tuesday's election for the three seats on the Washington State Supreme Court. Not because
I think that any of the incumbents are bums — I have no reason to believe
that — but because I have become so dissatisfied with the performance of the court in the decade
since I returned to Washington state that I am ready to turn out almost all of the incumbents.

I won't discuss specific cases, though you are more than welcome to do so at
Sound Politics.
Instead, I will identify what I consider the central flaw in
the court. A court can follow the law and the constitution, which is what I would
prefer. Or, if it chooses to act as a legislature, it can follow the will of the majority of the
voters. I don't care for that, but I can understand how someone could justify it. Time and
time again, majorities on Washington's Supreme Court have done neither. Instead, they have voted
to please the state's Democratic political establishment. And I consider that way of deciding
indefensible on any grounds. (And I would consider it equally indefensible if they were voting
to please the Republican political establishment, such as it is).

I can not think of a single decision, except possibly the 5-4 decision not to establish same-sex
marriage, where the court has displeased that establishment. (Even the same-sex marriage
decision might have support from much of the Democratic establishment on prudential grounds.
They might prefer a different decision, but they would prefer, even more, not to lose a friendly
judge.) And a little bit of thought should show you that the Democratic establishment must be
wrong in some of the cases that come before the court. But they don't lose many decisions.
(If you can think of any exceptions to that generalization, besides gay marriage, please note them in
a comment.)

Sometimes this desire to please the Democratic establishment has led to absurd decisions. Often,
since Democrats generally want to extend government power (except in criminal cases), it has led
to infringements on individual rights. A decade of watching these absurd decisions and these
infringements is enough for me. Next Tuesday, I will vote to throw the incumbents out, and to
elect Jeanette Burrage,
John Groen, and
Stephen Johnson.

That's Their Story: And they're sticking to it. One of the most
infuriating things about most "mainstream" journalists is their unwillingness to make corrections —
especially when those corrections come from people who are not members of their guild. That, as
I said in August, is the unlearned lesson of the
Jayson Blair scandal.

And here is a recent, and exceptionally infuriating
example of that
unwillingness to make corrections, however warranted. As you almost certainly know, many doubts
have been raised about the reporting from Lebanon of the recent war between Israel and Hezbollah, in
particular about some of the photos. Here's how Ian Mayes of the Guardian responded to one set
of criticisms:

On Tuesday July 25 the Guardian carried a report from south Lebanon headed: Red Cross ambulances destroyed
in Israeli air strike on rescue mission. It appeared on page 6, the last of three pages devoted to
the Middle East crisis that day. The report was filed from the southern Lebanon city of Tyre by one
of the paper's most experienced foreign correspondents, a former Jerusalem correspondent, Suzanne
Goldenberg.
. . .
I have received a number of emails referring to the zombietime website, one from a reader describing his
complaint as "purely personal" concluding, "Before I take this complaint forward to the PCC [the Press
Complaints Commission] I would appreciate your comments on the linked website [zombie-time] and also
whether you intend to retract the story." On the basis of my inquiries over several days last week
I do not intend to suggest that the paper should retract its report.
. . .
What the zombietime website, which takes issue with both of these Australian rebuttals, does show is a
fairly large number of inconsistencies and anomalies in the reporting and pictorial coverage of the event
across the media: whether these are larger in number than might normally be expected to occur in reporting
from a war zone is a matter for conjecture. A Guardian picture archivist with a special interest
in images from areas of conflict, who carried out extensive research for me, concluded that there was
cause for doubt about the nature of the munitions involved and the manner of their delivery, but not in
the reality of the attack.

There are a "fairly large number of inconsistencies and anomalies" and there is "cause for doubt", but he
has his story and he is sticking to it. In short, evidence doesn't matter. Why not?
Because Goldenberg is sticking by her story. And because some, but not all, "authorities" still
support the story.

Ian Mayes is not just any old journalist. He is the Guardian's reader's representative and
president of the Organisation of News Ombudsmen. (Which lends support to the argument I have made
from time to time, that newspaper ombudsmen are, on the whole, worse than useless.)

(I have started a new category of significant posts on the right, "Uncorrected Mistakes". I expect
to have little trouble finding many more examples. And I have almost no hope that we will be able
to shame many "mainstream" journalists into making more corrections — no matter what the
evidence.

The 2,996 Project: In one of the better memorials, bloggers organized a
cooperative effort to honor the 2,996 who were murdered on 9/11. Here are four posts, picked mostly
at random, from Michelle Malkin,
Chris Mazur,
Ed Morrisey, and "Sistah Toldjah". That's about all that I could read at one time without tearing up.

How Much Attention Did Clinton Pay To Intelligence In His First Years In
Office? Not much, as this sketchy biography of
James Woolsey reminds us.

As Director of the CIA, Woolsey is notable for having a very limited relationship with President Bill
Clinton. According to journalist Richard Miniter:

Never once in his two-year tenure did CIA director James Woolsey ever have a one-on-one meeting with
Clinton. Even semiprivate meetings were rare. They only happened twice. Woolsey
told me: "It wasn't that I had a bad relationship with the president. It just didn't exist." [2]

Woolsey headed the CIA for almost two years, from February 5, 1993 to January 10, 1995. And Clinton
essentially refused to see him during that time.

The relationship was so bad that when a crackpot crashed a light plane into the White House, Washington
wags quipped that it was just Woolsey trying to get in to see the president.

Not even the first attack on the World Trade Center, which occurred on February 26, 1993, got Clinton's
attention. (That attack, had it succeeded, would have killed far more people than were
killed 0n 9/11. The terrorists hoped to topple one tower into the other, which would have killed
everyone in both towers and many more in the neighboring buildings. If I recall correctly, the
terrorists hoped to kill 250,000 people. If they had succeeded, that loss would have been greater
than the US losses in every war except the Civil War and World War II.)

Why was Clinton so unwilling to speak to the head of the CIA? I have never seen a good
explanation. But we still need one.

Why 9/11? The Japanese chose December 7th to attack Pearl Harbor for sound
tactical reasons. They knew that the American forces were least on guard on Sunday mornings.
Osama bin laden and company seem to have chose the time of the 9/11 attack for similar tactical
reasons. They went early enough in the morning so that they could be assured of getting all, or
almost all, their men on the planes.

But why did they choose 9/11 for the day of the attack? I think it likely that they chose that
date for symbolic reasons, since the attack was, as I have said before, essentially a propaganda
attack. But what does it symbolize to them? I have seen a number of speculative answers to
that question. Most seem to think
that bin Laden chose that day because it marked some great Muslim defeat. One popular explanation
is that it marked the defeat of the Ottoman forces in the second
siege of Vienna.

The battle marked the turning point in the 300-year struggle between the forces of the Central European
kingdoms, and the Ottoman Empire. Over the sixteen years following the battle, the Habsburgs of
Austria, and their allies gradually occupied and dominated southern Hungary and Transylvania, which had
been largely cleared by the Turkish forces.

(Although picky folks might note that the victory was actually won on September 12th, when the Polish
king, John Sobieski, led
the relief force down from the hills in an attack that destroyed the weary Turkish army.)

But the second siege of Vienna isn't the only famous Muslim defeat that occurred on 9/11. There was
also the defeat of the Ottoman forces at the
siege of Malta.

And so it was that on Tuesday, September 11th 1565, the Ottoman Turks were driven from the Malta by the
stalwart defense of a small group of living anachronisms and the island's own brave inhabitants.
The greatest military force in the Mediterranean was broken on the walls of the island's fortresses, and
the swords, spears and shields of the islanders and the Knights.

(Malta was then, as it was in World War II, a key to control of the Mediterranean.)

The Battle of Zenta or Battle of Senta, fought on September 11, 1697 just south of modern Serbian town
of Senta (German: Zenta), on the east side of Tisa (Tisza), was a major engagement in the Great Turkish
War (1683-1699) and one of most decisive defeats in Turkish history.

Whatever bin Laden's reason(s) for choosing 9/11, these speculations tell us something about our
enemies. They want revenge for defeats suffered hundreds of years ago, defeats suffered by Muslim
armies that were engaged in wars of conquest. (Or in the case of Zenta, re-conquest.) That
should make it clear that we can surrender to our enemies, but we can not appease them, can not buy
them off with concessions. Many still refuse to face that unpleasant fact.

(There's a longer description of the battle of Zenta
here, and a biography of the victorious
commander, Prince Eugene of Savoy,
here. (Strange fact: Eugene wanted
to serve in the French army, but was refused a commission by Louis XIV. He joined the Austrians
and became one of the greatest enemies of the French king.))

"Getting It Right" That's the title of Ralph Peters' column.
And here's his uncompromising conclusion:

The biggest story since 9/11 is that there hasn't been an other 9/11. According to our hysterical
media culture, everything's always going wrong. The truth is that we've gotten the big things
right.
. . . Islamist fanatics have not been able to stage a single additional attack on our homeland. For
all its growing pains, our homeland-security effort worked. In this long war with religion-poisoned
madmen, the most important proof of success is what doesn't happen - and we haven't been struck
again. Wail as loudly as they can, the president's critics can't change that self-evident truth.

Though the critics can — and mostly will — ignore it.

After the 9/11 attack, I expected more attacks within a year, and I think that most others did,
too. Why was I wrong? There are a number of possible explanations for the lack of attacks
but the most obvious explanation is that, as Peters says, "we've gotten the big things right".
And we should celebrate that success.

(Later this week, I hope to discuss some of the other explanations for the lack of attacks.)

Want To See The Parts Of "The Path To 9/11", That Have Been
Cut? Here they are.

Which is what I predicted would happen, though I expected
talk show hosts, rather than bloggers, to be the first to do this. But with so many copies of the
original out (900, I think), I should have realized that it was inevitable that the cut portions would
be available on the net, and soon.

And for an analysis that expands on my argument that the attacks on the ABC docudrama are foolish,
see this fine
Tigerhawk post.

If He Continues As He Has Begun, Democratic senate candidate Ned Lamont will
provide us with many a chuckle before this campaign ends. Here's his latest
blunder.

Ned Lamont, Connecticut's Democratic Senate candidate, has sharply criticized Senator Joseph I. Lieberman's
public rebuke of former President Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, suggesting this week
that Mr. Lieberman turned his back on a decades-old friendship and helped make a tragic episode a "media
spectacle."

Mr. Lamont said on Wednesday night that he shared Mr. Lieberman's "moral outrage" over Mr. Clinton's sexual
misbehavior, but Mr. Lamont was harsh in attacking a speech that was praised as principled by many leaders
in both parties and helped propel the Connecticut senator to national prominence.

Ned Lamont, who this week chastised Senator Joseph I. Lieberman for his public rebuke of President Clinton
during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, wrote to Mr. Lieberman at the time praising the eloquence of his
speech on the Senate floor.

"I supported your statement because Clinton’s behavior was outrageous: a Democrat had to stand up and
state as much, and I hoped that your statement was the beginning of the end," Mr. Lamont, then a cable
television executive, wrote in an e-mail message to the senator's Washington office on Sept. 16, 1998,
two weeks after Mr. Lieberman's speech.

Lamont erred by bringing up the subject at all, and he erred by forgetting his own email. (Or by
thinking that the Lieberman staff would not dig it out.) Most voters, especially independents,
liked Lieberman's speech, so it was a mistake even to mention it. But to do so when Lamont had
expressed the opposite view at the time is sheer folly. It makes Lamont look both foolish and
unprincipled, which is not easy to do with a single statement.

(You can find a
similar analysis
here, along with links to some leftist complaints about newspapers even covering this, and some funny
comments.

By the way, polls show that Lieberman is leading
Lamont, though not by enormous margins. All in all, it looks like this will end very well for
the Republicans.)